A Blog Post

Spot the PPC Difference?

Recently, Google has been rolling out update after update for advert copy on the AdWords advertising platform. These changes include Ad Sitelinks (additional deep site links) , moving the display URLs under the title, allowing the first line of the description to follow the title. This of course is in addition to the recent introduction of Google +1.

I’m sure that like the rest of you, we have been updating our ads and utilising all these new updates to their full potential, but it wasn’t until recently that I spotted what I think Google have been trying to achieve.

Look at the screen shot above – wouldn’t you agree that at first glance it is hard to tell the difference between a natural SERP result and a paid search advert, especially when viewing the SERP via a laptop screen?

The architecture of the advert in position 3 and the 1st natural search listing result are almost identical. The only differences are that the natural search result does not have a coloured background which hard to even notice on my laptop screen, and the length of the title and description. They both incorporate deep links into the site, raised display URL’s, have extended titles and feature the same Google +1 button.

Obviously, Google’s objective is to increase the Click Though Rate of the paid search adverts by making the paid and natural search results appear to be the same. To be honest, so far this has happened across most of my campaigns.

So, then, what comes next? Longer titles and description lines? How long will it take for us to think beyond the 25+35+35 character limits?